10. Work: Digital Nomads & Playbour (Green--digital nomads OR Pink--playbour)

Welcome to Section 10, your required reading this week is:

 Pink et al. (2017) “Digital Work and Play: Mobile Technologies and New Ways of Feeling at Home.”. OR

Green (2020)  Digital Nomads in Chiang Mai

Recap

As we have seen, social media influencers can turn their activities into a livelihood. In other words, posting selfies, vlogs etc. becomes a form of work. This is one (admittedly strikingly) example of a general shift in work patterns. Indeed, digital technologies have profoundly transformed work (for better or worse, according to those who are experiencing it). We analyze this change anthropologically in this section.

So the question we are looking at here is "How have digital technologies affected work and leisure?"

Nomadism

You probably have heard of nomads before. The Mongols and Tibetans who follow their herds around the pastures represent famous examples of nomadism. Most of the Indigenous/Aboriginal societies of Australia were also nomadic, pre-colonization. Less famous are Sama-Baja, sea nomads of Southeast Asia.

In this ethnography, Gillian Tan of Deakin Uni describes "people in a region traditionally known as Kham, who move with their yaks from pasture to pasture, depending on the milk production of their herd for sustenance"

So why are some groups of people nomadic and others sedentary?

One way to answer this is mode of adaptation. Mode of adaptation represents the way a society makes a living. Specifically, anthropologists use this term to describe the way entire societies adapt to the environment in order to survive. I describe this more in this blog and in this video.

 Anthropologists have identified five main modes-of, listed below with famous examples:

1. Hunter-gatherer--Sama-Bajau; pre-colonization Indigenous Australians; and American Plains Indians;
2. Pastoral--herders of the Eurasian steppe; 
3. Horticultural--gardeners of PNG;
4. Agricultural--farmers of England; 
5. Industrial--factory workers of southeast China.

Basically, there are two forms of nomadism: hunter-gathering and pastoral. Traditionally, anthropologists used to reserve the concept nomadism to apply only to these two modes of adaptation.

Milking a yak 

So why are they always on the move? Hunter-gatherers and pastoralists can only sustain low population density. The hunter-gatherers have to continually move to find new food sources. Pastoralists must keep their herds moving. Neither can afford to be sedentary.

The term "nomad" has recently been extended to describe more contemporary sociological phenomena including "grey nomads" (retired Westerners who travel around the country in motorhomes") and "digital nomads". In this section, we consider the latter example. They have emerged in what might be a new mode-of-adaptation. It might be argued that a digital revolution has profoundly disrupted traditional work patterns and has created an information economy dominated by digital natives and characterized by digital nomads.

Digital Natives

Digital natives are supposed to be a generation of young people with superior digital skills and a fundamentally different way of thinking, working, etc. The term "Digital Natives" was coined and championed by Prensky in 2001. He believed that 'digital natives' think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors, as a result of being surrounded by new technology. As Prensky stated in the below lecture, "the young people they're different". They are living the life of a "digital native". They "communicate through instant messaging and chat; the share through blogs and MySpace," etc.

This idea of 'digital natives' attracted a great deal of anguish in the early 2000s. Because they'd grown up with technology, it was thought that the 'new' generation would process information in a fundamentally different way; this was supposed to profoundly impact their learning. So initially, people were worried about the digital natives, how can we teach them? The flipside was that this digital generation would be far more literate and technologically savvy.

For instance, a Library of Congress (2008) series entitled "Anthropology of Digital Natives" assumes that digital natives exist and need to be studied. Here is a summary of the lecture:

Young people today born into a digital world are experiencing a far different environment of information-gathering and access to knowledge than a generation ago. Who are these "digital natives" and what are they thinking? How are they using the technology, and are IT experts adequately responding to them? These questions will be addressed in a new Library of Congress series titled "Digital Natives." The four-lecture series will examine the generation that has been raised with the computer as a natural part of their lives, with emphasis on the young people currently in schools and colleges today. The series will seek to understand the practices and culture of these digital natives, the cultural implications of the phenomenon and the implications for education -- schools, universities and libraries.

'Native' digital natives 

We can find only a few cases where the concept of "digital native" has been used as an analytical tool by anthropologists. Specifically, in the edited 2006 publication Native on the net: indigenous and diasporic peoples in the virtual age, various authors, including La Trobe's Helen Lee, argued that Indigenous and diasporic people proved to be remarkably adept and 'early adopters' of digital technologies. One publication's title played on the word "native" meaning "Indigenous person". They were in two senses, digital natives. However, for the most part, the "digital native" concept did not take hold in the social sciences.

Problems with the "digital native" concept 

One of the reasons the concept failed to gain traction may have been the difficulty in identifying people who actually matched the definition. Further research indicated that those who should have been digital natives did not necessarily possess superior 'digital literacy' as it was known. Though we use a fridge every day, we don't necessarily understand its inner mechanics. Indeed, much current research labels the concept inaccurate (Judd 2018; Bennett & Maton 2010; Rodi, Spangler, Kohun & DeLorenzo 2014). Some scholars go so far as to describe digital natives as a myth (Kirschner & De Bruyckere 2017) or even as a 'moral panic' (Bennett, Maton & Kervin 2008). So the idea of "digital native" has been largely abandoned - not just in anthropology but in IT and communications as well. The abandonment of the "digital native" concept among social scientists is largely due to the broadening and further study of how people engage with digital technologies. 

The "digital native" concept placed a divide firmly down generational lines, but later scholarship showed that this is not the most significant factor in digital uptake, nor does it accurately reflect how young people engage with digital technologies. Such studies uncovered other, more significant barriers to digital tech use and understanding. For instance, Helsper & Eynon (2010) see the breadth of use, gender, education levels as more significant than a generation. This fits into the broader shift away from seeing the digital as a distinct and separate 'place' that influences 'offline worlds', re-orienting the digital as a fluid space wherein its use and understanding are shaped by the culture/society/community in which the digital tech is being used. 

Put another way, academics came to think that 'digital native' was not particularly useful as an 'etic' term for developing a scholarly analysis of the world. It is not a useful concept for social scientists to use. It came to be thought of as more an emic concept, to be studied and analyzed itself. Nevertheless, the idea that digital natives were transforming the worldwide economy was [widely accepted outside scholarly circles]. Indeed, many people began talking about digital disruption.

Digital Disruption 

Particularly tied to business and economic dealings, 'digital disruption' usually refers to transformations and innovations that break from (or 'disrupt') traditional ways and means of conducting business. Central to the definition of digital disruption is the assumption that these new ways and means are fostered by advanced or innovative digital technologies. Examples include Netflix's disruption of media consumption or Uber's disruption of the taxi industry. The concept of disruption seems to imply destruction as well as opportunities. For example, anthropology graduates at the Australian National University (ANU), discuss both sides of the digital disruption coin in a blog summarised as follows: 

Jodie (6:53) asks about digital disruptions and their unintended consequences. Are we looking only to a future of corporate power and social atomization? Can it all be bad? “Surely some of the changes must be positive, in a non-hedonistic way.” Patrick gives us some hope, by telling us about a use of technology that we didn’t foresee: “I was actually, the other day, trying to find an app that would allow me to scan someone’s body for the health of their chakras.” And Julia points out that “what digital disruption might mean is that our imagination and our superstition and our beliefs in various systems like chakras could be destroyed, through relying more and more on ‘digital objectivity.’” 

Digital disruption in the media industry esp. journalism

To understand digital disruption, we could consider one example: the media industry. First, let's consider the effects of digital disruption. Digital disruption has transformed print journalism into a 24hour news cycle. The journalists had to produce material instantaneously and in large quantities across multiple platforms (Online news for Twitter, Instagram, etc). They also had to be multi-skilled. Most often the case, there's no longer a separate photographer, videographer, editor, sub-editor, researchers--reporters had to do it all for online news consumption and only using their 'smart-phone'.

As a comparative example, here is a summary of what digital journalism is like in Malaysia (Firdaus 2018):

Social media has brought about massive changes in the make-up of numerous industries. Journalism, in particular, has had to contend with digital disruptions in the forms of blogs, citizen journalism and massive user-driven interactive platforms offering alternatives to traditional news media. Firdhaus' book examines this new 'media ecology' in the Malaysian context. She coins the term 'network newswork', describing it as an emerging practice of news production. Not only does this provide a term for the complex media environment, but it describes how user-driven sources can be incorporated into various stages of news production. Her work unveils a new way of thinking about the process of digital disruption and how traditional industries respond to these new challenges. 

For more information on an anthropological understanding of how the media industry is transformed by digital disruption, have a look at Anna Cristina Pertierra's (2018) book Media Anthropology for the Digital Age (available as an e-book from La Trobe library).

'Emic' understandings of digital disruption 

Now let's turn to how journalists themselves believed the changes would play out. In other words, what was the 'emic' understanding among those in the media industry? The general perception was that young people were digital natives. It was believed that:

1. They would be able to pioneer the 'digital transformation' of the media towards online instead of print news. 
2. During mass global lay-offs (2012-ongoing) of print-based journalists, younger journalists, who were considered 'digital natives' were presumed to be able to survive the decimation of the print news industry. They would keep their jobs because they were lower-paid (cost less to employ) or they would move on to another job in the online media industry, catering to younger readers who were also considered digital natives. 

In other words, the emic belief was that digital natives created and would thrive in the digital transformation. 

Scholarly analysis of digital disruption 

However, current research does not support these emic notions. Younger journalists, who were considered digital natives, were the ones experiencing burn-out because of the digital disruption to the media industry. For example, Zion, Sherwood, & Winarnita (all La Trobe Uni scholars) show that in Australia about 3000 journalists, including young journalists, who lost their jobs in mass lay-offs, have their working lives profoundly changed because of digital disruption. Thus journalists around the world, regardless of whether they are young or old, 'digital natives' or not, have struggled with the transformation.

Digital Nomads

It is presumed that digital nomads are young digital natives who are responding to digital disruption and digital transformation of work. The term "digital nomad" refers to 'location-independent' workers who use the Internet and other digital technologies for work. In theory, digital nomads could travel anywhere in work. In practice, they tend to congregate in certain locations such as Ubud, Chiang Mal, and so on. Mourtadis (2018) defines "digital nomad" as "people who have rejected the idea of working in a conventional office, but instead, they work and travel without a clear destination". Of course,
as  Dave Cook of University College of London shows in the Conversation, the reality of digital nomadism doesn't always live up to the promise. But, as anthropologists, we want to get past this kind of analysis and find out how the digital technologies interact with the culture of work. 

Research on digital nomads 

Digital nomadism was not discussed deeply in academia until relatively recently. The term became popular in metaphor and as a way to describe new ways of working and connecting with others made possible by an increasingly digital globe. In this period, (1990s - mid 2000s), the possibilities and detriments of digital technology were the subjects of great speculation. With either trepidation or excitement, theorists began to discuss the use and implications of newer technologies, higher computing power and other such digital innovations.

This speculation predicted both utopian and dystopian social consequences. In the utopian interpretation of digital nomads, digital technologies enabled: freedom (from office space and routine); democratization (in the sense that the ‘tools’ to build a business would be available to everyone for little to no cost); and the ultimate in self-determination. In the dystopian interpretation, digital technologies, while alluring, brought with them: distortions of identity; no work-life balance (as one always had the potential to work, one could never truly be ‘off work’); substitutions of real connection with virtual ones; and a lack of stability (in housing, profession, marital status, etc).

A 'digital nomad' working remotely from El Salvador

So, to the anthropologist, do digital nomads represent a revolution in our attitudes to work - unencumbered by the constraints of physical work-space and traditional life-narratives? Or, are Digital nomads perpetually ‘on-the-clock’, unable to connect with others, with ‘nothing to show for it’? As noted more broadly in Horst and Miller’s work, both utopian and dystopian predictions for digital technologies did not come to fruition. So too with digital nomads. Paul Green, an anthropologist from Melbourne Uni, talks about his research in a fascinating interview (1:41 - 12:26). We could summarize Paul Green's observations as follows:

A digital nomad is a person who is "leveraging digital technology to be able to combine work and travel interests"(2:01). Though there are a variety of factors in the decision to become a digital nomad, many coalesce around lifestyle. Most digital nomads come from developed nations (USA, UK, European nations, etc) and it appears to be no coincidence that many head to popular tourist destinations around South East Asia. 'At home' younger people may feel excluded from the property market or that they have fewer opportunities. There is also a generational shift in values away from property ownership and long-term often office-based work.
In contrast, SE Asian countries often have a lower cost of living, making it possible to eat well and live healthily with many touristic opportunities that can fit into a travel lifestyle. In this sense, 'digital nomads' reflect a general trend in developed nations but also on broader, global inequalities. On an individual level, the digital nomads perceive a number of negatives associated with the experience of digital nomadism. There can be quite a lot of pressure to 'live up' to the glamorous image of being a 'digital nomadism' as well as; loneliness, struggles with setting up or maintaining businesses, low motivation, and questions over maintaining long-term relationships or having children while trying to maintain a digitally nomadic lifestyle.

To follow up on this maybe read, Green (2020)  Digital Nomads in Chiang Mai

What does this workstation say about the type of lifestyle digital nomads want to lead and portray?

In his anthropology thesis "Digital Nomadism: Travel, Remote Work and Alternative Lifestyles",  Mourtadis describes perceived advantages and disadvantages of the 'digital nomad' lifestyle. For instance, Digital nomadism unhooks many from the 9 to 5 drudgery of working in an office. Many are able to adapt to their new working situation by forming new ways to communicate, work and socialize. Travel patterns, productivity, work/leisure practices, and sociability have to be renegotiated when they are no longer bound to a certain locality. Constantly on the move, digital nomads have no designated work hours and have to deal with the lack of a clear division between leisure time and work time. Mourtadis also found that although they are traveling from place to place nomads want to be perceived as something “more”  than a tourist.

Ethic & Digital Nomadism

This concept of ethic becomes relevant when we consider the idea of digital nomads and work. By the time the digital revolution gained traction, c. 2000, the Protestant ethic had spread far outside the circles of Protestants. In many segments of Australian society, for example, if you were not working, you were considered unproductive, a burden, or worse. The digital disruption caused by the new technologies has begun to wreak havoc in the lives of some who identified themselves with their work.

On the other hand, another ethic had emerged probably from the hippy movement of the 1960s. This was to live 'free', unchained and unhindered by authority and capitalism. The digital nomads of recent years have sought to combine this vision with a new kind of working practice.

Playbour

 Pink et. al. point to the emergence of “playbour”. This is when we mix play and labour in our lives by e.g. gaming while in the office or working while in bed at home. Pink analyses this in terms of ‘atmospheres’. Atmosphere describes our feeling or vibe while we are going through our daily lives using social media, cooking dinner, sitting on the bus etc.. It's how we feel about the:

relationship between work, home, play and mobile media and the feelings that are associated with it are emerging in a context where mobile media are integral to the making of contemporary mundane worlds.

Pink et. al. don't have any 'hard findings' or make any large claims. But I think the research is important. Why? Because anthropology is the study of what it is to be human. And for many people, life is like the boring couple in Melbourne, Nerida and Amanda, who post photos of their cats playing on their iPad, who play solitaire in bed, and so on. 

Conclusion

Digital technologies have produced new ways of working. But at the same time, old forms of labour persist. The other is, aside from free and open-source ware, many applications and some of the content are created through paid work. And what about the unpaid work--the emotional labor and so on that social media 'influencers' force themselves to undertake? 

Further research

 Digital has transformed work but, equally, work has transformed the digital. Changing patterns of work and leisure (e.g. Covid work from home) have affected digital technologies (we now do a lot of zooming!). To understand the culture of work (and leisure) you also might want to consider the emergence of "work" and "labour" in Western cultures, in relation to the Protestant ethic, and how they don't necessarily apply in non-Western cultures. 

Next week

Utopian dreams and dystopian nightmares about the digital transformation are the topic in the next section of this course. 

Further reading